Saturday and Sunday, 5th & 6th March 2022

Misa and Emilka were dropped off at school with all their camping gear for a Duke of Edinburgh (DoE) award practice expedition at 10am on Saturday morning.  The prospect of 33 hours of child-free time lay ahead.  What shall we do?

A tuk tuk ride from school had us nicely on time for haircuts for each of us with our favourite hairdresser at Leena Hari Salon to start with. Another tuk tuk ride had us home for an English brunch and a gentle afternoon of relaxing.

In the evening we glammed up for dinner at the sumptuous restaurant at Tintagel, a beautifully maintained and stylishly furnished Colonial home. Unable to get a taxi, we had no choice but to take a tatty old tuk tuk (albeit with a very friendly and responsible driver) so as we climbed out in our Finest, Steve commented that he was rather glad the liveried doorman had apparently popped to the loo!

Starting in the library with a cocktail each (of which I accidentally tipped half of mine over Steve!) and seated on a comfy old leather sofa, we then moved to the dining room to dine on rare rare rib eye steak for Steve and Barramundi (a lovely white fish) for me.  My starter was large, fresh button mushrooms stuffed with cheese and wrapped in crispy bacon (divine) and Steve’s a spicy crab soup (equally divine, apparently!).  An excellent Chilean Malbec washed it all down, and a coffee and home made ice cream topped it off.

On Sunday we had a lie in (predictable, with no urgency to get up) and then went for lunch outdoors at one of our “go to” places; Barefoot café with it’s live jazz where we were joined by a circle of friends to gate crash our romantic time.  

The kids arrived back at school just before 5pm, absolutely exhausted after having a fantastic time that exceeded their expectations. Camping in this tropical island has it’s own challenges – heat, humidity, mosquitos, leeches, bugs; you name it, but they not only survived, they loved it.

We were hoping to have another romantic time this weekend with the kids doing their assessment expedition, but the collapsed economy and absence of fuel to purchase for one of the school buses means that it has been postponed; a feature of so much since Covid arrived in March 2020 and now for another reason for which there is no end in immediate sight.

Rennie